When you see numbers like a "1,000% increase in conversions from prospects to subscribers over the previous year" and a "27.27% trial-to-sale conversion rate," you take notice. So let's see what led to these amazing numbers for Argosy Group's Regulatory Compliance Watch Webinars in 2016—a campaign that earned the Simplify Compliance business unit a Third Place 2017 SIPAward for Best Lead Generation Program.

Speaking at SIPA's Best Practices Conference on Website Optimization in Atlanta, Melissa Johnson, director, marketing automation strategy, Informa Engage, said that Informa has gone from 9 quizzes and 3,600 leads generated in 2014 to 81 quizzes and 21,000 leads in 2015 to 134 quizzes and 39,000 leads in 2016.

Almost all of us have faced a similar situation: We have good content—be it a report, series of articles, newsletter, podcast, webinar—that didn't get the audience it deserved. We can ignore it and hope the insanity doctrine—designing and marketing it the same way and expecting a different result—won't apply to us.

I just took a peek at the schedule so far for SIPA 2017, the 41 st Annual SIPA Conference: Growth Now, June 5-7, here in Washington, D.C., and I see more than one session focused on strong content. "Attracting and Incentivizing Content Creators," "Copywriting Secrets of the Pros," "Practical Tools for Writing SEO-Friendly Web Copy," Monetizing Archived Content."

One of the best outcomes of the SIPAwards every year is that it shows us here at SIPA—and then members through our outreach—of the great work and interesting programs taking place. With the entry deadline for the 2016 SIPAwards extended to next Friday, April 8—so you can still enter here—let's catch up with lead generation aspects of last year's winners